A Chance Encounter

A perfectly normal January Saturday in the Upper Midwest — sky cloudless and razor-sharp, temperature hovering around ten Fahrenheit. I was out running a few errands after the morning’s fixtures. High on caffeine and nicotine, I pulled into an open spot, lingered in my hybrid Civic a few while the NPR hostess interrogated her hapless guest on the financial oddities of la famille Trump. My phone let me know that someone liked my tweet about Harry Kane.

Next to me, a clay-red thoroughly weathered Ford pickup idled. Festooned with stickers, it wasn’t out of place here, a perfectly normal Midwest grocery in this gaspingly alive perfectly Midwest town. “Cruz 2016,” “Send Them Back,” “Support Yer Boys in Blue,” and the like made for an interesting contrast with the ass of my blue Honda. I straightened my tie, fired a (surreptitiously-obtained) Djarum Black and nodded to the wife-beater-wearing, fully inked, poorly-maintained Fu Manchu-sporting gent in the truck, locked my door, exhaled a cloud of blue smoke tendrils tearing off in the ether and went off.

My car’s stickers proclaimed my allegiance to an English football club, an Ivy, intersectionality, the Human Rights Campaign, and a bold strip of rainbow announcing my homosexuality and my commitment to the worldwide defense of LGBTQ equality.

I don’t think we’ll become friends, he and I, but one never knows. Oh, America.